


under investigation lies a bitter heart

by girlsarewolves



Series: exchanges [8]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/M, Fic Exchange, Incest, Sibling Incest, Twincest, Very Slight Fantasy Elements, darker ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-07-19 05:14:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19968610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlsarewolves/pseuds/girlsarewolves
Summary: Wanda remembered stories of ancient magic and beings from other worlds. She remembered stories passed down only in whispers to sleepy children, stories she and Pietro lived for - of the fair folk, of nature spirits, beautiful and cruel and kind and selfish and everything that humans were but more, so much more. The stories that they would come and play with mortals, sometimes leaving behind children with gifts.Tricks.“You think we’re fairies?”





	under investigation lies a bitter heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VampirePaladin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VampirePaladin/gifts).



* * *

Wanda and Pietro had always been connected. 

  


A twin thing, their parents used to say. Twins were rumored to be one soul, divided between two bodies. Even before they were bound together by trauma, Wanda had always thought of Pietro as her other half. It was easier when they were children, when there was less to separate them, when they could touch and whisper and lay together without the suspicion and judgment - when they were gangly twigs, when they were poor but had a family, when their world wasn’t war and suffering and bloody tyrants being hailed as heroes.

  


But then came the bombs.

  


Then came the hole in their floor, like a gaping wound that couldn’t close, like a black hole sucking away their family and their world as they knew it.

  


Then came _Stark_.

  


It was that day when the old blood in their veins awoke. Then they started to feel...different, even as they became more tightly bound by the loss and the anger that took the place of their parents. It was then when they started to feel something surge within them.

  


Sometimes it would happen at random. A burst of speed when Pietro was running off after grabbing a loaf of bread, a rock flying towards a stray cat that spooked Wanda. Sometimes they would try, and nothing would happen. Sometimes they would try - and too much would happen. What little they had collected - stolen - would rise up into the air and crash down, or Pietro would run and by the time he stopped he was in a neighboring country.

  


It didn’t take them long to realize the stronger their emotions, the more easily they tap into these new...tricks they have, but higher pressure could sometimes counteract that. It took them longer to work out the balance and the control, to put this knowledge to good use, practicing and failing and fighting their own frustration that rendered their tricks useless either by not working at all or working too well.

  


Weeks turned to months turned to years, and Wanda and Pietro became bitter adults, made of hard edges and mouths full of ash, and something inhuman in their bodies - and a rage that protests and riots couldn’t satisfy. Weeks and months and years honing their tricks, learning how to use them even when frustrated, even when the pressure was at its highest.

  


It wasn’t long after that when Strucker reached out to them - to many of their country folk who had been hurt by Tony Stark and felt voiceless among the crowds that called him a hero. He was seeking volunteers, people who were willing to go to any length to stop the Avengers and Tony Stark and those who would let them run loose without any consequences for those they left suffering in their wake as they ‘saved the world.’

  


That was all they wanted. They signed up immediately.

  


They said nothing of what they could already do. 

  


The experiments hurt, but they could feel the power of the sceptre mixing with the power already flowing through them. They let it out, little by little, letting Strucker think that they were just the first successes - a twin thing, he murmured to himself after conducting some tests to see how they were taking to the sceptre’s influence.

  


Others had died, and Wanda was more concerned that she wasn’t concerned. 

  


But she and Pietro lived, tapping more into their power, the sceptre feeding into whatever magic had awoken in them all those years ago. The more experiments were conducted, the more their power grew, the more of it they hid from Strucker and his doctors and soldiers - and the more they started to see.

  


The more they felt connected - to everything. As though their veins were old roots, winding through their bodies and the more they watered those roots with this power, the stronger their bond to this Earth became.

  


Wanda remembered stories of ancient magic and beings from other worlds. She remembered stories passed down only in whispers to sleepy children, stories she and Pietro lived for - of the fair folk, of nature spirits, beautiful and cruel and kind and selfish and everything that humans were but more, so much _more_. The stories that they would come and play with mortals, sometimes leaving behind children with gifts.

  


_Tricks_.

  


“You think we’re fairies?” Pietro asked her one day, when it was the two of them sitting across from each other, eating their more balanced meals compared to the slop the soldiers and scientists had to settle with. He was smirking, eyes twinkling with amusement and disbelief. “You always were a sucker for mother’s stories.”

  


Wanda felt her eyes roll more than she put conscious effort into it. “We had powers before we ever met Strucker, aliens invade through holes in the sky, and some of the old gods are real - but this is what you want to scoff at?”

  


Pietro shrugged, staring down at his food. He would not meet her gaze, and that was one of the many tells he was giving her now to show he knew she was right. “So what about our parents? Grandparents?”

  


Now it was Wanda’s turn to shrug. “What about them? They had it in them, but it never got the push it needed.” She reached over, laying her hand over his, turning it over so that her fingers could trace the lines of his palm. “Tell me you do not feel it - the spark, the electricity when we touch. Tell me you do not feel it when we are out of this concrete fortress, that same electricity when we touch the ground, the trees, feel the wind and the rain on our faces. There is something magical in us. Not science,” she half sneered, glancing at the doctors who are pretending not to be watching them, trying to hear what they are saying.

  


But she and Pietro were not speaking English or German or Sokovian, but a strange combination of all three, of different slang and dialects they’d picked up since they were tiny and still learning to use words to communicate. They have always had their own, private language.

  


A twin thing.

  


It was how they have always guarded their secrets. 

  


Pietro did not so much nod as he tilted his head from side to side, begrudgingly admitting to all that she was stating and asking. “But still...the fair folk? Perhaps it is simply mutation. They say that humans are overdue for a new stage of evolution.”

  


“Wouldn’t they find something in our blood?”

  


“Perhaps, perhaps not. I don’t know, science was never my best subject. And suppose we did have fairy blood. Is that not something they would pick up?”

  


Wanda sighed, her fingers now moving in circles over Pietro’s palm. Her irises were a steady red, the urge to smash a table into the wall or shatter the windows - something to let out a little of this power building up inside her, itching to be let out. 

  


Another hand laid over his, cradling it in both of is, and Pietro leaned in close so that their foreheads were touching. “Hey. I could be wrong. But does it matter? We are becoming more powerful - especially you. Soon we can go after them, whether Strucker wants us to or not. And we will kill them. We will kill Tony Stark.” He closed his eyes, giving her silent permission to read him, to read the trust, the love, the _bond_ that was them and nobody else - others would come and go, but it would always be them.

  


They were each other’s constant.

  


Wanda knew he was right. What did it matter, at the end of the day? There were no fae armies that would come to their rescue, no fairy realm waiting to accept them and give them shelter. Knowing where their powers came from was not as important as knowing the best way to use them and how to make them stronger.

  


There of course came the day, the long awaited day when the Avengers finally came. Like loud and swinging instruments of destruction they came - and of course at front and center was none other than Stark.

  


That name on the missile laying only feet away from them.

  


Tony Stark called a hero.

  


When Wanda found him, looking through Strucker’s secrets, through the ruins of the invaders’ machinery, she had something special in mind for him. She intended to let him see his worst fears realized and then kill him, make his mind turn against his own body, dying trapped in his nightmare.

  


But then she saw his fear.

  


Saw his paranoia and his need to combat it - control it.

  


Saw the lengths he would go to in order to do so.

  


Pietro questioned her when she instructed him to let them leave - “We had him!” he shouted at her, “We still could! I could!”

  


Wanda cupped his face, pulled him down so she could press her forehead to his, let him see what she had seen, let him feel the fear and dread and the destruction that panic, that helplessness would cause. “Trust in me, Pietro. We will have Tony Stark and the Avengers. He will make it happen.”

  


They spent the night there in the ruins of Strucker’s ambitions. Curled up tightly together in the same bed, without nosy eyes and gossiping mouths to judge them or shame them. They weren’t just siblings, they were twins. One soul, two bodies - always connected and always separated. They found comfort in each other, in becoming one again for what blissful moments they were able to take for themselves before sleep crept in.

  


The next morning they fled, running back home and blending into the crowds of the poor and the struggling and the wandering.

  


It was two nights later when they met the ‘metal man’ and Wanda saw the fruits of the seeds she had planted in Tony Stark’s mind. It was two nights later when they finally found someone who wasn’t after power or position - but _reparations_.

  


In hindsight Wanda knew she should have told Pietro to take her and run. When she could not read Ultron, when he spoke up belief and faith and balance, when she knew he had come from the mind of Tony Stark - even if it was without love or blood to bind them - she should have known it wasn’t peace and restoration he was chasing after but destruction and chaos. She should have known he would be as misguided as his creator.

  


And yet...Wanda wondered.

  


Was chaos so extreme? 

  


Was a global shake-up really too far?

  


The world had stagnated in a cycle of the wealthy abusing the poor, the strong controlling the weak - and they dressed it up in shiny and color suits and called it heroic, called its agents of order and that vicious cycle saviors. It kept saying it would change, and it never did, and all around the world those born to privilege never lost it, no matter what they did.

  


When she glimpsed the depths of destruction Ultron was not just capable but actively planning on, part of her wondered.

  


Maybe this was what the world needed.

  


Maybe this would bring their ancestors back. Maybe this would level the playing field. Maybe this...maybe this was what she had known was coming all along, when she saw Stark’s fear, and the lengths he would go to to stop it, thereby all but ensuring it would happen. Maybe this was the only way to destroy the Avengers and stop any who would rise up in their place.

  


“Does this not make us as bad as Stark?” Pietro asked her, in the shadowed corridor away from Ultron and his new body. “Would we not be leaving more orphans trapped in the ruins of everything they once knew?”

  


Wanda’s eyes were a steady red, that power flowing through her, almost too much for her body to contain, and she cupped his face and kissed him hard as she let him feel and see all that she could feel and see, let him taste that power and that very same destruction that laid in wait within her - and she knew, deep down, they were as much Stark’s creations as Ultron. “There will always be more children trapped in rubble, wandering homeless through ruins, voiceless even though they deserve justice. As long as Stark and SHIELD and any of it is left, any trace, it will just rise up again, with a new name and a new mask, but it is always the same, vile serpent. What if we could end it for good?”

  


Her brother - her twin, her other half - stared at her for the first time with a touch of the horror she saw so often in the scientists and the soldiers and those her mind touched. It was gone in a blink, and Pietro pressed his forehead to hers, eyes closed in silent permission to let her read him, let her feel his fear and uncertainty and above everything - trust.

  


“Then let’s end it.”


End file.
